I see my recent works as a new cornerstone in my pursuit of concepts such as power, violence, exile, alienation. A process of knowing and understanding the powers that surround us from inside and outside… 

For a long time now, I’ve been in the inner world with one foot while in the outer world with the other foot; I’ve been endeavoring to ensure a conciliatory co-existence of these two worlds. I thoroughly contemplated the state of being exiled in both inner and physical terms while working on these works. The more I delved into these works, the more I realized that the images entrenched in the subliminal resurfaced to my consciousness and followed a path which I could term as a mid-path between the conscious and the unconscious. I found there traces of suffering caused by the humanity, which is corrupted by culture, for itself and other living beings as well as the places themselves in a context of industrialization etched in memories, nestling in the urban silhouettes. I saw there people and civilizations ruthlessly exterminating one another.

I found images of the earth in grief as they presented their unique beauty and silently screamed; and the nature provoking the unconscious, which could in one way or another be creative, saying ‘I swear I will retaliate on what has been done to me’. This nature had also been expecting us to face up to our own humanity. I realized that I tracked down those who could not detach themselves from their own pasts and from what they were forced to abandon or those who embraced that bond and ascribed more meanings to what they could not abandon, thus turning them into a myth. These were bonds which absorbed those that ascribed that meaning thanks to the charm of the meaning they had ascribed, but which discarded them immediately afterwards only to leave them feeling their own deterritorialization.

While working, I felt stillness and movement, scream and silence, past and present, crusts and the state of being unencrusted--- the state of being shelled??, everything and nothing, the togetherness of life and death. I thought once again that the only remedy to overcome the trauma caused by being exiled, the fear and alienation caused by power-worship, was to be able to face up to our own dark sides. I also thought about the fact that a self-aware person had to think about the deep chasms that have been opened and ask the question ‘What can I do about it?’ and to be able to oppose vulgar annihilations, all sorts of violence, to cleanse themselves by stripping out of their narcissisms in order to take the responsibility to seek remedies in order to make the world a livable place again. 

With the round canvases I use in this exhibition, I wanted to emphasize the circularity of time; the completion which is the greatest desire of the humankind; the vicious circle of violence that the humanity has somehow not been able to surpass, and that everything within a moment is nothing.

Nur Ataibiş